Creating a luxury niche fragrance brand around destinations not to be sniffed at
YOU could say it was her nose for travel and stories that led her to create her own luxury niche fragrance company built around her favourite places in Asia. That, and love for her mother who passed away in 2018.
Till then, Elizabeth Liau, founder of Maison de L’Asie, positioned as the first luxury niche fragrance house in Asia, had spent her career in finance and private equity in the UK and Middle East, and then art and finance, including a stint in Sotheby’s. When she returned to Singapore, she immersed herself in the local art scene, working for the Ministry of Arts and Culture as well as the National Gallery.
Elizabeth Liau: “A new brand always faces challenges in explaining why a “new product’ is needed.”
In between all that, she travelled. A lot. The travel bug got her early. When studying film and art in New York , she discovered South America. When back in Singapore, she travelled extensively in South-east Asia and that experience led her to start a travel company to offer luxury curated travel experiences around the region, while still working in the art world.
“I was looking for high end bespoke experiences and wanted to develop a new vertical and platform,” she recalled of her foray in 2016/2017. “South-east Asia was a new area but the activity providers weren’t there at the time, they weren’t as efficient. I developed the content and the tech but then realised it wasn’t a very scalable business.”
She started looking at how she could merge her two loves, art and travel. Her mother’s passing in 2018 took her down another path. “I started developing fragrances, to capture what I was missing – the nostalgia and comfort of the person.”
The seed for Maison de L’Asie was born. “I looked at the perfume market and felt that Asia was under-represented in niche perfumes. The luxury niche perfume market is also growing – in China, 80 percent of the high end perfume market is with niche brands.
“I wanted to tell the story of Asia in a different light, for Asians to be proud of our stories and for Westerners to see or rather, sense, Asia in a new light.”
Thus, Maison de L’Asie combines the art of perfume with the story of travel and places. Its fragrances are told in chapters, with each chapter told through three scents.
Chapter 1, Singapore – Mother’s Love, Lost Lovers and Nanyang, is inspired by her mother and her roots in Singapore. Chapter 2 is Indonesia, themed around reverie – Bali Hai, Nights of Bali and Woods of Indonesia being the three scents.
To capture the nostalgia of Singapore, she uses ingredients such as bergamot, green tea, leather, saffron, jasmine and vanilla. “It’s a very clean scent, cuts through your memories. Bali Hai is a misty, dreamy scent – it’s a coconut theme, with hints of saffron, tobacco and vanilla – and you feel very relaxed when you use it.”
Chapter 3, Thailand, will be launched shortly around the theme of “Entropy” and Liau is currently travelling to work on Chapter 4 which will cover a new destination in Asia.
Given she’s developing an Asian brand about Asia, I asked her why she was using French names as well as working with French perfumeries and ingredients for her fragrances.
“There’s a lot of legacy associations with French perfume as quality. I wanted to work with French perfumeries and ingredients to create a hybrid of East and West,” she said. The products are assembled in Singapore.
Currently, most of her customers are Europeans and it’s sold online, including Singapore Airlines’ Kris Shop. She did her first pop-up store in Singapore and will look at distribution in South-east Asia as a priority. With travel in South-east Asia rebounding, she will also explore duty free shops at airport.
And the next chapter of Maison de L’Asie? To offer curated luxury travel experiences of destinations around her fragrances. “That would be a dream come true, to go back to where I started – travel – and to combine my love of travel and fragrance to tell the story of places through the sense of smell.”
Chapter 2, Indonesia: “Staying authentic to the brand’s voice is key and not merely swaying to the trends – and I believe that confidence in one’s voice is the difference between a brand that makes an impact versus just another brand on the shelf.”
Building a niche brand online – it starts with targeting communities
Building a brand online though has its challenges, especially with the proliferation of online stores during the pandemic. Asked how she gets her brand discovered among the plethora of online businesses, she said, “A lot of the initial efforts involved identifying the target online communities that would align with brand and our products. Getting the target markets talking about the products is key to organic growth because these are authentic testimonies and buy-ins.
“Consumers these days are much more intelligent and discerning in products that are pushed to them without fully understanding what needs the product is addressing. Because of the nature of the product (perfume), getting the samples into the customers was also key to allow them to experience the scents. Together with our stories and music, we hope to make our online experience a more immersive one and this is something we continue to expand on.”
To ensure consumers understood the story behind the brand, Liau was deliberate about website design and architecture. “I wanted something clean and understated, where the stories and olfactory inspirations of the perfumes standout. This is obviously quite challenging with our website concept which involves storytelling and while emphasising that, still focused on the core products.”
Digital marketing remains key with targeted online campaigns. “We also have a few distribution channel partners in Singapore with their own marketing campaigns pushing our brand, reaching into their own database. We have seen quite a few customers coming in from those channels. In addition, our pop-up concept also really allowed us to tap into new customers who simply venture in because of them loving our fragrances outside our store.”
Maison de L’Asie has about 12,000 followers on Instagram and Liau said its sales have slowly been increasing from the various channel partners in Singapore and the region.
“Overseas sales continue to contribute to our numbers from our online sales. We are hoping that once travel retail returns, sales will continue to increase from the positioning of our scents as the ideal travel souvenirs customers would want to take with them, with our various perfume chapters capturing the interpretation of the country narratives from the region.
“There’s also going to be some interesting collaborations in the horizon which we will announce at a later date.”
The biggest challenge of course is the highly competitive market and “quite frankly, the world doesn’t need another perfume”, she laughed. “There are thousands on the shelves, and customers usually stay loyal to a brand they have been using for a while.
“On the flip side, I truly think that’s also why a niche brand like us has legs to showcase something totally new and refined in our approach. A new brand always faces challenges in explaining why a “new product’ is needed. However, I don’t wish to simply sell a new product – I wish to showcase a brand that encapsulates a meaningful interpretation of Asia, of emotions, and also a new interpretation of classic fragrances that customers would find appealing in today’s context.
“Staying authentic to the brand’s voice is key and not merely swaying to the trends – and I believe that confidence in one’s voice is the difference between a brand that makes an impact versus just another brand on the shelf. And customers can sense this.”
